Big telcos may do better than you think

Brad Gibson of Current Thinking wrote in a recent comment</a>:

What really convinced me to give up on [the Primus Canada TalkBroadband service] however was a new service that Bell Canada is offering; Single Number Reach (SNR). They probably should call it 'VOIP killer'. Priced at C$19.95/month with vmail, it is a virtual number service with faxing, web interface, pager/email/sms notification and find me/follow me features. That was what I was hoping VOIP could do for me, now I've got it with my standard telephone and without the annoying 10 second wait for a dial tone and the extra piece of bling on my crowded desk. On top of that I ended up cancelling a couple of standard lines that had been used for dedicated fax and switch re-directing, saving about C$90/month. Excerpt of comment by Brad Gibson on VoIP Value Adds

Great review, Brad. Your mention of a "10 second wait for a dial tone" sounds like a problem with your network setup -- myself and several acquaintances haven't had that experience. I agree that Primus should have launched with a "better" product, but I think it was more important for them to be "first". I think it's too early to tell who will succeed in this new VoIP market -- I am glad that the additional features now available are pushing everyone to compete more.

My friend Troy Angrignon made an interesting comment: services like Bell's SNR have actually been offered for a long time, at least the find me/follow me. But people don't want to be found -- they use a series of numbers to segment people that can contact them in different contexts. We often forget that so many of the issues around communication have nothing to do with technology, but are more social.